In 1975 Patrick Eagar took some photographs which were unlike any cricket photographs anyone had seen before.

It was a year when two of the most powerful sides toured England to compete for the first ever World Cup. They were the legendary Australian side that featured the lethal fast bowlers Lillee and Thomson as well as the Chappell brothers, Marsh and Walters. The other visitor was the emerging superpower of the West Indies, captained by Clive Lloyd and included the young Andy Roberts and Viv Richards. From this raw material Eagar found something which is almost magical. As the Guardian celebrated at the time, he 'renders cricket a service as no one else in his field has ever done before'.

His pictures show that, 'feeling is the thing that happens in 1000th of a second.' So this is a cricket book about photography and what it can do - tell the future and show human beings in ways not available to our eyes. It is part detective story (and reconstruction of one of the great summers of cricket), part biography and part essay on the power of the image, myth and reality.

With 50 black-and-white and 20 colour photographs by Patrick Eager and other great photographers, is it is essential reading for any cricket fan.

About the Author

Christian Ryan is one of the most stylish and intelligent of writers on the sport today. He was awarded UK Cricket Book of the Year in 2010 for Golden Boy, his book on Kim Hughes's tempestuous period as Captain of the Australian Cricket team.

Christian Ryan takes a bunch of photographs from that season and reverses the tired cliche about a picture and a thousand words. In thousands of words, he spells out the magic contained in a kind of cricket photograph whose like we do not see so much these days. -- Sharda Ugra * Cricket Monthly * What Eagar got out of it is a photograph of Thomson like no other . . . Other photographs may say more about the game of cricket, but no other picture better conveys the intent of the fast bowler who at the moment of delivery has eyes only for the batsman at the other end of the wicket. He's in for the kill. -- Inigo Thomas * London Review of Books * Patrick Eagar, the genius photographer of cricket's modern era, has retired now, leaving behind a treasure trove of images . . . The summer of 1975, when Australia's fast bowlers came to terrorise, and the first World Cup was staged. It is a fascinating study of Eagar's art before the internet, and the digital age. -- Mike Atherton * The Times * Feeling is magical, a head rush, a marvel. It takes one summer many summers ago in the life of a cricket photographer and conjures something timeless and human. The breadth of artistic insight, the exhilarating diversions, connections and epiphanies, the miraculous details, the structural genius - taut and unspooling like John McPhee's Levels of the Game, but wilder - are propelled by an unaccountable suspense. What, you find yourself asking, will this gentle, extraordinary photographer do next? Where will this brilliant, obsessed writer take you next? Can he pull it off? Shouldn't be able to. Does he pull it off? Yes, yes, yes. * Rahul Bhattacharya, Ondaatje Prize-winning author of Pundits from Pakistan * Christian Ryan is cricket writing's most exquisite miniaturist, capable of revealing whole worlds with a knowing glance. In the peerless Patrick Eagar, he finds his perfect subject * Gideon Haigh * A brilliant photographer, a brilliant writer - and one of the most startlingly original cricket books ever published * Matthew Engel *